Bloody Students..

It's only just occured to me that for all my promising of talking about yesterday - I still haven't. So, before I go to bed or forget everything, I'd better type it all out..

Right, I get a phonecall from Julia saying that they're about to leave Nottingham and are about to set off and head for Birmingham. I know they're staying at the Brittania Hotel which is right off New St, so it's fabulously a central enough location for me to get to. We agree to meet at 1pm (traffic permitting). Oh, I should point out that Julia and Trevor don't actually live in Nottingham, they live in Ipswich. It's only that they were visiting friends in Nottingham.

There was a load of faff about meeting AGB and Taz. Basically, AGB couldn't join us until after 8pm when our table for Casa Italia was booked for 8pm and was on the outskirts of town. AGB was reluctant to join us for dinner and I knew that I wouldn't be wanting to be moving about everywhere on a Saturday night. I'm more the kind of person who likes to go to one good place and settle there for the night knowing there is good food and drink. So instead of going to Casa Italia like I was hoping to, we ended up in The Green Room given how they have a late licence thus serving food until later than most places, was central enough a location and well, was decent food with a good selection of vegetarian options. The Green Room is always my one place I can rely and fall back on. It is consistently good and I don't feel bad about suggesting we go there for food.

Now that we had settled for the night at our table, time passed with us all chatting away reminiscing about our student days. My god! We used to drink some awful shit when we were students - It was making our stomachs turn just talking about some of the stuff.. Ginzing, Molson, Red, Reef, Metz (I told them them about the time when Kyle and I both drunk 7 bottles of Metz in an hour at the student bar in between tutorials.. Then we both turned up pissed to the Marketing tutorial :p)

We remembered Sally and Adam's wedding, well, "blessing" since they actually got married in Sri Lanka. Despite the fact that they argue more than the Roses do, they're still together. Sally apparently keeps the house in immaculate condition with her DIY skills (she was always more creative) and Adam? He just plays on the PS2 an shows off his beautiful wife when they go out :rolleyes: I was laughing at how YKL went to the blessing too - even though she didn't know either of them and we had only told her stories of how much they argue. And this was only on the day of the blessing! We laughed thinking of the reception afterwards and how there was the typical shit DJ (mullet, moustache, Crimbo jumper, could NOT connect wih the crowd at all). Trevor said that he couldn't remember what he did all night. I reminded him that he just stood by the bar and his Dad (quite drunkenly) was offering drinks to everyone he spoke to all night ("You got a drink?" "Erm no" "Lemme buy you one, what do you want?"). SO all night, he got free pints of guinness. I then reminded them both how back at the hotel, there was a vending machine for lager.. And how we all got a curry and ate it in my room. That's *just* what I needed... Drinking until 6am (we had to leave the restaurant/bar area because they were getting ready for breakfast!) We had to be up at 10am... The room stinking of curry - NOT what I needed when I was hungover to high hell. AGB and I then went to Leeds to meet YKL, and we (in particular I) was so hungover that I had to ask if we could stop to buy some water given I was so dehydrated and the mere thought of eating (we were meeting for lunch) was making me sick..

I told of the time how the toilet seat in The House broke, so we obviously had to replace it. At Wilko's, I was thinking that we would have to spend about £20 (£20!!!) on a wooden one. But Julia then reminded us that it's only for Mr Ali and we're all moving out soon. So we ended up getting the cheapest one there (£1.99) that was made out of the thinnest plastic possible and you still had to hover over the toilet bowl because the plastic edge used to cut into your bum (!)

We all laughed remember some of the shit we used to do as students. Then we all thought about how we're all grown up now.. We've got proper jobs and think about proper grown up things like mortgages and buying household electricals. We're all happy professionally which is something rare. Hopefully though, I can be even happier professionally in the New Year.



A great deal of our time was spent talking about BoBo. It's a shame how of the three of us, she's the one whom we hear from the least. I'm sure she would want to keep more in touch, but for whatever reason, communication between us all has fallen by the wayside. I know that when they went travelling together, Julia and Bobo had a bit of a fall-out. And when you consider that Julia is living with Bo's brother (and has been since we were students) that they would hear from her more.. But sadly that isn't the case. Bo used to get upset at how she thought that we were all splitting up and thus keep out of touch. I remember telling her how we will always be friends and I for one, will do my best to keep in touch. She would say how useless she is at keeping in touch. And what do you know? This has proven to be the case. I still send her the odd email and text message - But I never get a reply. I'll be needing to get her address from Trevor next so that I can send her cards and/or letters. I still worry about the hold that Welshman has over her. And it pisses me off to know that he restricts what she does resulting in her being like a caged bird. Sometimes, I wonder if he is the reason why I don't hear from her very much... But still, we all move on.

As if to really cement the fact that we're all older now, Julia dropped the idea of us all going on holiday with each other next Easter.. We could all hire a villa or gîte for the week. We were thinking of places and I said that given how we're going in Spring, we don't necessarily have to go far South to be warm - Especially since I'm going to Toulouse in January! So we're thinking of going to Normandy. Trevor and I are going to drink a bottle of Calvados each (!) and Julia can see the Bayeux Tapestry (ever the Historian!). So, hopefully that can come off. It's like the next phase of our friendship.. The Adult part.

I had a brilliant time with Trevor, Julia and then with AGB and Taz when they joined us. I'm glad that I can call them my friends. We've been through so much together and I can only hope that we'll be there for each other in the future.